The Damnation of the Pigmen
by Skypiratewolf
Summary: After much speculation and searching, one account has been found of what possibly could've brought the Pigman race to the Nether, but is it fact or pure hogwash?
1. Prologue

I write this in hopes that someone else will learn of what I've discovered. Has anyone ever wondered about the races of our world? Has anyone wondered if the skeletons or zombies that chase us and haunt us at night were people, like us? Only recently did I find out that the ancient Crafters were actually real, and not simply myth, but I've had reoccurring thoughts about the other ancients of the Overworld. They honestly could not have been the only ones.

As I'm sure most modern Crafters are aware of, there are other dimensions with other mobs that haunt the dreams of the sane of mind. The End is only home to the Endermen, now that the Crafter, Steve, has vanquished the great Enderdragon. The other dimension, though…the one discovered far before The End…this one is commonly referred to as the Nether.

I honestly believe the original name was changed for story telling purposes. There is no possible way they wouldn't have named the cruel wasteland Hell. It's where certain creatures are believed to have been damned from the Overworld, according to some folktales and legends. In one instance, however, it is actually true. If one ever traveled there, one would know exactly which creature I would be referring to if I spoke the name 'zombie Pigman.' Though, if I asked myself – before I had made this discovery and learned the truth – how a calm, passive mob deserved to be damned to such an awful place, I would have no such answer for myself nor anyone else who wondered. But, simply…no, there is no simply. There is a history that must be told and there is only one account of it that seems to exist. Buried deep in this dusty, timeless stronghold, I have unearthed this one record – diary, almost – from the grand library.

Before I reveal it to you, though, I must remind you that the ancient Crafters have always been the cause of every person's suffering in the Overworld, from now on to through the most ancient of history.


	2. Chapter 1

The day had just begun and something already seemed amiss. My village was quiet, and on a day as beautiful as today, everyone would have been enjoying the smell of the grass and feeling the sunlight. I walked onto the cobblestone path and traveled quickly into the center of town, following the sound of a crowd. To my relief, I found that the villagers had gone to the little meeting square at the center path crossing, but now I was concerned with what had all of their attentions.

In this little village, we thrived on the abundance of what the valley floor gave us. We had wheat, pumpkins, melons, and all sorts of livestock. Really, the only thing we didn't have were the materials deep below the surface in the dark caves. It was alright with us, though. The Crafters were nice enough to trade with us for those precious stuffs.

I made my way to the center of the crowd, past everyone's and their excited snorts and squeals. At the center, I found a broadly smiling Crafter holding a shiny diamond pickaxe. He seemed to be doing something like a sales pitch.

"What's going on?" I softly nudged the person next to me. He turned to me and grinned.

"The bloke says 'e can mine the black lava rock with 'is new pickaxe. 'e's been sayin' it for the past couple minutes, but 'e 'asn't showed us nothin'" The pigman said, rubbing his nose on his sleeve. I cocked an eyebrow and looked at the Crafter eagerly. The black lava rock – obsidian – was impenetrable to even gold tools. How the man had managed to get enough diamonds to make such a pristine tool was impressive enough, but to find a way to mine obsidian? He must've been a genius…or a lucky miner.

"I believe I've made my audience wait long enough," The Crafter said, stepping onto a small wooden box to look over everyone. "Ladies and gentle-swine! Before you is the greatest tool ever crafted! I give you…the diamond pickaxe!" He said as he presented it eagerly. Some of the younger folks "ooo"-ed and "ahh"-ed at the pretty tool, but the rest of us looked on in silence. Though it was difficult to make such a thing, it wasn't impossible. Some of us actually had one in our own.

"Yeh! So whut?" The man beside me bellowed. A chorus of "yeah!"-s and murmurs were aimed at the Crafter. His delighted sneer didn't die away a bit, though. It actually brightened more, like he was expecting it.

"Yes, but look at what I can do with it." He said, suddenly pulling a bucket out from behind him. Everyone jolted back in surprise. The bucket was full of lava. He tipped the lava into a crevice in the ground just in front of us, filling it like a small moat. Then, he ran from his box to the well on the other side of the street. In a quick flurry that only last about thirty seconds, he had poured the lava into the ground, retrieved a full bucket of water, then dumped the water onto the molten slag. With a loud_ whoosh_ and _hiss_, the lava steamed up the water and solidified into the black, impenetrable stone, obsidian. Just as fast as he had done that, we watched as he started wailing on the stone with his pickaxe. Despite the fact that I was sure I wasn't the only one thinking this man was a hyped-up lunatic, we all watched as the obsidian broke against the diamond tool. The Crafter took a large chunk of it from the ground and held it up triumphantly.

"Hah hah! What did I tell you?! It really works!" He cried. The crowd seemed impressed, murmuring in approval and clapping a few times for him. I was impressed, too, but I was still wondering about one thing.

"What would we use obsidian for?" I asked over the load clapping and crowd noise. The Crafter seemed to have rehearsed the whole thing; he knew someone was going to ask that question.

"You see, my good man, obsidian is fire proof! You can make a fire pit or a fire place without the risk of setting anything ablaze." He said with a slightly menacing chuckle. I cocked my head and snorted a little. I was intrigued. I'd always wanted a fireplace in my home, but with the abundance of wood, that was what all of our houses were made of.

The crowd started to disperse as the Crafter bowed a couple times. The information of the new building material had started to flow freely among the people of the village, which the Crafter seemed to take note of and looked about us with a dense aura of pride. I stepped up to the Crafter, who promptly shook my hand.

"Thanks for helping my presentation along. Couldn't have done it without ya." He said warmly. I gave him the best smile I could, but I didn't really think I needed to be thanked for simply asking a question.

"Yeah, no problem, I guess. I just wanted to know why you came all this way to tell us. I'm sure one of us would've found out about it eventually." I said. The Crafter arched an eyebrow and leaned against the torch post next to him.

"What, a Crafter can't help you guys out every once in a while?" He said with a frustrated scowl. To be honest, I wanted to tell him that we didn't want Crafter help. Every time they "helped" us, they seemed to expect some long and meaningful praise The Pigmen were pretty much sick of the Crafters thinking we needed their help and that they were better than us because they were more "courageous" than we were. In fact, we simply didn't put ourselves in harm's way as often.

"No, that's not what I meant. I just know the nearest Crafter village is nearly a day's trip away. I just figured no one would travel so far for such a small presentation." I answered as kindly as I could make myself sound. He seemed pleased with the response and nodded. He looked back up with that devious smirk that unnerved me.

"You talk like there's none of your kind living in the village I'm from." He said. I didn't like that statement. "Your kind"? I knew he said it like that on purpose. He was one of the Crafters that thought he was better than us, better than me. Talking to him had proven to be a mistake.

"Well, is there?" I asked, persisting against my common sense telling me to walk away. The Crafter simply shook his head with dismissive grin, and picked up the diamond pickaxe.

"Have a good day, sir." He said, walking down and out of the village. As I watched him walk away, I was slightly perturbed by his whole demeanor. I had learned to accept the Crafters like they had learned to accept us, but…I don't know. Since they called the pigs in our pens our close cousins, they seemed to think we were as dirty or even as dull witted as they were. I don't know when they began the degradation and discrimination of us, but it had to stop at some point.

"Hey, Burtow! Burtow!" A voice called from down the street. I looked to the person who shouted at me and smiled to find my closest friend, Townsend. He was a rather handsome gent with the physique of a lumberjack, but he was still a child at heart.

"Hey there! How's it going?" I greeted him warmly. He scuffed his hooves on the stone path and had a smile on that I'd seen several times before from when we were kids. He had a plan to do something…adventurous.

"I saw that Crafter's sales pitch about the obsidian. Not a bad material, if you ask me." He chuckled. I nodded in agreement, but kept my personal opinion about the Crafter out of my mouth. He didn't need another reason to dislike them.

"Yeah, it seems a lot people are excited about it." I replied. I was interested myself, but not enough for it to really show.

"And that's why you and I are going to go harvest a ton and sell it." He said with an intense expression of determination. I looked to my friend like he was out of his mind. Obsidian involved lava and there was no way I wanted to be roasted like the swine that I was.

"Are you nuts? That's beyond dangerous. I'm not risking my hide from some shiny, black rock." I grumbled. Townsend scowled and took me by the shoulder, wrapping his arm around me and started to stroll down the lane.

"Come, come now. This isn't the worst idea I've ever had, and trust me, it won't be the last, but we've done stupider things." He said. He was right about that. As kids, we had done plenty of stupid things. The main one I remembered off the top of my head – my personal favorite – we had "borrowed" a pig from my mother's livestock pen and Townsend had yanked a couple carrots from his father's garden. We made a makeshift saddle out of half a rug and tied the carrots to a string that we had tied to a stick. Mr. Oink was hungry for carrots, that much was certain, because when I waved the orange veggie in front of his snout, he took off like a bolt of lightning. To make an exhilarating story short, Mr. Oink and I didn't see the ledge before it was too late and his squishy body was the only reason I survived the fall. Our parents whipped our rumps raw and we were never to go near that pig pen ever again. To this day, I still blame it all on Townsend.

"Yeah, I know. I just don't want to catch flame because we got too close to the lava." I muttered. He patted my shoulder and chuckled.

"You worry too much. Everything will be fine." He said. I gave him a skeptical look, a look I was sure he had seen plenty of times as well.

"You said that the time I broke almost all of the bones in the right side of my body. If we do this, I'm going to catch fire, I can almost guarantee it." I said bluntly. Townsend still looked optimistic, which told me he wasn't going to drop it, and he gave me an exhausted sigh.

"Alright, alright, I'll give you the night to think about it, but I want an answer by tomorrow morning, ya hear?" He said, pointing a chubby digit at me. I brushed his hand away and nodded.

"Yeah, yeah, okay." I muttered back, giving him a friendly smirk. He nodded and let me go.

"Oh, before I leave, how's your progress on that whole brewing thing?" He asked. I had barely worked on my little personal project since the last time I had talked to him. It wasn't worth talking about, really…

"Still haven't found something that can get hot enough to dissolve all of the components together and stabilize the mixture. Frankly, I don't think I've any stable ingredients either." I shrugged. He snorted in disappointment and said goodbye. I was more perplexed by my brewing problem than Townsend's get-rich-quick scheme. I could've definitely made more money that way than with rocks. Unfortunately… the rock was already in demand. As I walked up to my home, I let out a defeated sigh. My decision had been made. I just needed to dig up my armor so I didn't end up as barbecue.

I stared into the little flask in front of me, trying its best to boil. The combination of water and redstone looked to try and come together, but it just wasn't working. There had to have been an ingredient missing. I just didn't know where it could've possibly been. I slammed a clinched fist onto the table and swore, pushing away and letting out an angry snort.

Tomorrow was already starting to bug me. Townsend was so eager to be going so soon. I knew he wanted to go now, in the dead of the night. Patience was non-existent with him. That was one of my pet peeves with my old friend. Careful planning and caution had always been my strongest suit. Him, not so much. He always controlled the situation and I couldn't tell him no, no matter how much I wanted to. Looking over to my stand, my armor was ready for me for the morning. I just knew there was some way I could protect myself more, but I didn't have the means to figure out what it was.

The night was already cold and yet still alive. Skeletons rattled around and zombies clawed at the windows. Our iron doors, however, kept them at bay. Since they were deterred, I could just stare right back at them, feeling sympathy and pity for the lifeless eyes that looked straight through mine. I noticed that every zombie looked kinda like a Crafter. It was eerie and strange, really. The only zombies I ever saw were Crafters. No pigmen, no Testificates. The Testificates were an odd bunch. They were bald with big noses and the brightest green eyes. I think people simply started calling them villagers after losing touch with the meaning of their true names.

Either way, no one shared the same opinion I had about the living corpses. No one thought anything disturbing or…unworldly could happen to such a superior race. I thought it was simply cosmic justice for their huge egos and complexes. I knew my karma was no better, but I didn't dwell on it then.

I turned my little burner off and blew out my torch. It was late and Townsend would be expecting me. Laying my head down on my feather filled pillow, I tried to sleep through the creepy chill of being stared at by lifeless eyes.


	3. Chapter 2

"See? You had your armor ready and everything. This plan was bound to come together easily." Townsend said brightly, gently nudging me with his shoulder. He tossed me a loaf of bread and we started into the woods. He had moved through with his little plan much more quickly than I would've liked. It's not that I didn't really expect it. His eager nature had always woken me up at the crack of dawn and made me work through crusty eyes and a lack of sleep. He was already wearing his armor, had crafter two diamond pickaxes with diamonds I didn't know he had, and had said "let's go!"

"I'm hoping you realize we're going to be in the dark with mobs…vicious mobs?" I emphasized my worry and slowly ate my bread. My stomach wasn't settling properly and, again, I blamed it all on Townsend. He was so carefree and sure of himself. He was like a damned Crafter!

"Stop freakin' worrying, Burt, okay?!" He exclaimed, suddenly turning toward me and stopping me in my tracks. "You've become an even bigger scaredy cat the older you've gotten. This is why the Crafters call us cowards! Don't you want to prove them wrong?!" He practically yelled at me, his tone echoing across the trees. Now I was unsure of his state of mind. He didn't want money. He wanted to prove that he was better. Now that he had showed me his true intention and the true meaning behind his enthusiasm…I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to prove those arrogant bastards wrong!

"Yes, I do, Townsend. Let's do this. We're not cowards and we will not run home squealing like the animals they think we are." I said, clutching the pickaxe he had given me, and grasped his arm tight. Townsend's disappointed glare turned to a joyous, triumphant smile as he gripped my arm.

"Yeah, there's the Burtow I know! Come on! Head long into danger!" He cried as we descended into the cave. With a torch in hand, I went first into the darkness, being the lookout for us both. It didn't take long to hear the moans and groans of the dead, but it took longer to find out where they were hiding.

The halls twisted and turned, deeper and deeper below the ground. I could feel the pressure changing and my ears were starting to pop. Just as I was able to release the bubbles in my head, a zombie hissed forward almost inches from my face.

That day, we learned that pickaxes can be as useful as swords to fight back the monsters. I had driven the sharp point of the tool into the zombie's head, lodging it into its brain. As I prepared to swing back up and smash it in the skull again, its spine detached, and its head came clean off. Its body collapsed and the head grunted a few times before dying. I was happily surprised that I had killed it all on my own, but it wasn't the only creature we faced on the search for lava and water. Spiders, skeletons, more zombies…it never seemed to end. Townsend was having the time of her life slaying every creature in our path. I already wanted to go home. My adrenaline fueled courage was all gone and I was ready to get out of the cold earth.

Just as I had opened my mouth to voice my defeat, I saw a glow coming from the bottom of a steep drop. I looked down the hole, Townsend following suit.

"I think we finally found some lava." He said optimistically. Frankly, I figured he was right, but it really seemed like we were heading into a whole new set of dangers. He started to dig a staircase-like decline down and I followed slowly behind. The closer we got to the bottom, the more I was certain I could hear the bubbling of magma. Townsend jumped from the low ledge and ran ahead of me, leaving me to frantically catch up. We both stopped in our tracks at the magnificent sight the orange glow revealed itself to be. The narrow hall had opened up and showed the grand cavern we had been searching for. I wasn't sure how far the cavern went, but narrow land bridges and long ridges showed to be the only paths while everything in between was hollow and empty. Sprawling below the enormous expanse was an equally enormous lake of molten lava. I stood there, mouth wide open, marveling at the beauty of it all. Townsend took me around the shoulders, startling me at first, then bringing a smile to my face.

"This is what we've been missing. It's…amazing, isn't it?" He said thoughtfully. I admired it a little more, then nodded in agreement.

"It sure is…" We didn't waste time getting to work. It took us a while to get a bucket of water, finding that a spider's nest rested right above the only waterfall within reach. It isn't easy to fetch water when it is also raining spiders. Poisonous spider, I may add.

Once the eight-legged nuisances were dealt with, the rest of the process seemed to move smoothly. Townsend dumped the water across a large chunk of the lava lake. Steam loudly rose up to the top of the cavern, nearly burning us both as we looked over. A lot of light was extinguished, but that was where I came in. I set up a large perimeter of torches around our dig site, lighting it up to the point of it almost being day all the way down in the earth.

Let it be known that I am a hard working person with the scrawny arms of a young girl. I tried my damnedest to keep up with Townsend in his fast he was excavating the black rock, but obsidian is one of the hardest substances in the Overworld, maybe in the universe. It didn't take long before I was sitting on a ledge, wiping the sweat from my brow.

Townsend and I sat on the edge of our huge obsidian pit. We had dug it into a bowl shape, which in retrospect was probably not the wisest of choices due to the fact that it felt like we were cooking ourselves in our bowl. We were sweating like crazy, incredibly thirsty, beyond tired, and we still had to climb back up.

"We need to get out of here. We have a pretty good haul. I could really go for a good chicken dinner right now…baked potatoes sound nice, too…" Townsend said, his stomach suddenly growling so loud I was sure the whole cave had heart it. I chuckled and stood up, stretching my legs.

"You sound tired, my friend. Don't tell me you're quitting now." I sneered. He gave a sideways glace and shook his head.

"I'm not quitting. We've been down here for hours. Like any normal person, I'm tired. Let's get going. We've got enough obsidian to build a couple houses." He said pulling himself out of the bowl pit. It took us less time to get out into the sunlight, and all the while up, we discussed how people could've simply used clay bricks for their fire places. We came to the conclusion that people simply were bored with what they had. As we stepped into the sunlight of the surface and our hooves touched lush grass, we fell down and took a long breather.

"So," I started, "What are you going to do with your money if this works as well as you think it will?" Townsend looked up, pulling his snout from the dirt and resting his head on his hands. He seemed to be caught off guard by the question. I simply assumed he would've known and planned for something that he wanted.

"You know, it never occurred to me I would spend it on anything. I never really thought I'd have enough money to be proud of anyway, let alone spend it." He said. I nodded in agreement. He and I had discussed a lot about where we would go in our lives. Didn't get much farther than having a roof over our heads, having enough food in our stomachs and our pantries, and maybe settling down to have a family someday. We always brought up family last. We didn't want that kind of responsibility yet and we didn't think any girl would like us enough to even get ten feet near us.

"Maybe we'd have enough to make bigger houses. I would love to expand." I said, imagining my dream house. He sat quietly and day dreamed with me. It seemed that that was what our hearts were set on; new homes.

At the dream of our new abodes, we rushed back home and searched for a vendor that would buy our obsidian. Unfortunately, we couldn't find a single one that was willing to pay more than iron. We weren't going to sell for anything less than diamond and emeralds. It looked like it was our job to sell our own wares to the people.

Townsend spread word around town about how we had acquired enough obsidian for every villager to have their own modest fireplaces of their own. I kept it all in my house, using my storage cellar. I was hoping that word had spread far enough that it had actually spread to the far villages. I wondered if the Crafters or Testificates had already heard. I was truly curious, if the Crafters _had_ heard, if they were impressed that two pigmen had done it. I hoped so.

Every five blocks of obsidian went at either two emeralds or three diamonds, depending on the quality of the pieces themselves. Townsend and I were truly stunned on how much people were buying. One instance in particular, a Testificate had bought three hundred pieces. What he was going to do with it, he didn't say, but whatever it was he was truly eager about it.

After a short three days, our stock was gone and Townsend and I were sitting on a hefty pile of gems. Then, as we started counting, I saw the greed start to cloud my dear friend's eyes…


End file.
